Soon I have to figure out another way to count. 77 weeks is not a very helpful measurement of age. She’s 17.5 months now.

– Second dentist appointment went very well. It was this morning, and the dentist complimented us on how clean and healthy her teeth look. We’ve been flossing and brushing every day and it’s paying off! J was a little concerned when the dentist leaned over her, but stopped crying once the dentist started poking at her teeth. I think she just didn’t know what was going on until then. We hold her in the same position to brush her teeth at home so once the dentist started, she clearly figured out what was going on and stopped being upset. The dentist says her canines should be in any day now. She has a minor chip on one of her front teeth (minor enough that I had to point it out and ask about it). The dentist said not to be concerned, that it looked fine. Then they gave her a rubber ducky and a balloon! She loved the balloon. She was so excited to have a new ball! But she didn’t like that when she threw it, it went up to where she couldn’t reach it anymore.

J holding balloon

Her balloon

– So many new words! I think that any day she’ll have that explosion of vocabulary.

– Putting things away. If you ask her to put something away, she usually will. It’s a good way to get her to stop playing with something that she needs to leave behind. It’s also made a huge difference in how messy our house gets. Instead of saying, “Okay, go ahead and go get another book!” you can say, “Go put this book away and choose another!” and she’ll dutifully put her book away and bring you a different one to read. She can easily spend an hour being read to like this.

– Speaking of books, she can finally handle paper books, not just board books. She still chews and rips if you give her a book unsupervised, but it’s safe to read to her with a paper book. She’s very gentle turning the pages. This has opened up whole new avenues of reading, which is great because Dad and I were getting pretty darned tired of most of our board books.